


Red as my Ocean, Black as my Sky

by NothingSoDivine



Series: Sxyvaan [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Comfort Sex, Established Relationship, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Smut, Gentle Sex, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mild Body Worship, Pale Sex? not sure how to tag that, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Recovery, Sex, Suicide Attempt, WUZZLES!, all of the feels, all of them - Freeform, boys with cute, cheers guys, cuteness, didn't even know that was a thing, lovemaking, mentions of eating disorders, right in the feels, take that suckers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-09 15:50:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3255557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NothingSoDivine/pseuds/NothingSoDivine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat's had a rough go of it. What with the college loans paid off, and the music starting to pay off, money's not as tight as it was, and times are getting better. But despite that, the depression's still there, and he's still recovering from the anorexia that nearly claimed his life. It's not easy, trying to recover from something like that. Dave doesn't really understand, but he does his best.</p><p>TW: attempted suicide, self-harm (comes with the territory), mentions of eating disorders, all accompanying angst, etc. so please don't read it if that is or might be a problem for you (and if it is a problem for you, we're all with you, you can make it, stay strong, you are loved (: ).</p><p>UPDATE: pending rewrite. This could take a very long time, but it's going to happen at some point or another, so just keep an eye out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red as my Ocean, Black as my Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lbk_princen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lbk_princen/gifts).



> I'm sorry my summaries suck balls :P
> 
> For my ex-matesprit of the non-binary persuasion. Love you babe <3

_I love you as red as my ocean;_  
_I want you as black as my sky._  
_If your arms are always open,_  
_Then darling, so are my eyes._

* * *

The first time Dave Strider kissed your wrist, you'd been eating an ice cream cone. It was years ago, back before you were a band, back in ninth grade when he was your best-worst friend in the whole entire universe and nothing could ever go wrong - back before your world went to shit and your subconscious decided you should weigh in under 85. Your ice cream (vanilla) had been dripping down your wrist, and he'd grabbed your arm and licked it off, before planting a joking kiss on your skin. You'd yelled at him about getting spit on you - "I can't stand it, fuckwad, never do it again or I swear to the gods I'll have your guts for garters -" then proceeded to meticulously clean the remaining ice cream and saliva off your wrist with a napkin. You'd left not long after, still grumpy, and hadn't answered your phone when it rang thirty seconds later. He'd left an apologetic voicemail, still breathless with laughter.

The second time Dave kissed your wrist, it was to calm you down. Years had passed; the two of you had been an online sensation as a band for several months, and your friend Nepeta had insisted on making you perform live. You'd agreed without knowing what you'd gotten yourself into, and you ended up working yourself into a panic until Dave, focused entirely on the words spewing from your mouth, took your hand and placed an absent-minded kiss on the soft skin on the inside of your wrist. You'd calmed right the fuck down.

The third time is too painful, still, for you to think too much about.

* * *

The first time Karkat Vantas let you kiss his wrist was in ninth grade, and you were pretty sure it was only out of shock that he didn't try and hit you for it. The two of you were the closest of friends, and you were just hanging out, discussing music over ice cream cones (that ice cream place had homemade apple cinnamon ice cream, it was the best fucking thing), when Karkat's ice cream started dripping down his wrist. So, naturally, you reached over and licked it off. He squeaked, mid-sentence, so you placed a teasing kiss against the place you'd just licked and made a sarcastic comment about how the value of his hide just went up by 3,000% now that it was infused with Strider saliva. He'd proceeded to chew you out about getting spit on him, shrieking at you the entire time he cleaned off your spit from his wrist. The pout he wore as he left ensured that you could hardly breathe from laughing when you called seconds later to apologise. He hadn't answered, so you'd been forced to leave your apology in a breathless, half-incoherent voicemail.

The second time you kissed his wrist, he'd been freaking out about performing in front of an audience. Automatically, even though it had been three years since you'd done it last, you raised his wrist to your lips and kissed it, before instructing him to "chill the fuck out, bro." (It worked.)

The third time broke your heart.

* * *

It was just at the point where you were starting to really love Karkat, but you hadn't quite noticed yet. (You were still fucked up over Terezi, distracting little bitch.) Times had been a little rough - you were both fresh out of college, both paying off student loans and somehow still surviving on the money you were making working minimum-wage jobs at the local fast-food places. But hey - you were okay. Times were rough, sure, the music still wasn't paying off - but you were surviving. Right?

You'd both gotten drunk at a party. He walked you home - your house was on the way home for him, so you walked together. You said you'd see him tomorrow; he nodded and said, "Yeah."

You'd woken the next afternoon to a splitting hangover, a thunderstorm, and a grumbling stomach. Halfway through your 4:30 pm breakfast, it had occurred to you to see if Karkat was okay.

He hadn't answered the phone.

 _He's probably still sleeping,_ you'd tried to convince yourself, but some base instinct knew better. Something was wrong. You'd left your half-eaten breakfast on the table and _ran_ the two and a half blocks to his house, in the pouring rain.

He hadn't answered the doorbell - you rang it once and gave up, breaking in through the back window the way he taught you to do when you needed to get in, the way he used when he forgot his key. He wasn't in his room; instinctively, you'd checked the bathroom.

When people describe things like walking in on their best friends bleeding out in the bathtub, they draw you the big picture. You didn't see the big picture. You just saw a bathtub full of red, and Karkat lying, half-conscious, in the middle of it all. You just heard the rain - too angry to fit; not sad enough for pathetic fallacy - pounding at the window, just smelled the sharp, metallic tang of blood, just saw _your best friend dying_. His eyelids fluttering. His fingers moving weakly, lips tracing silent words, when he saw you. The apology in his face. The sob that wracked his weak body.

The number pad of your cell phone. 9. 1. 1.

_Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt._

" _911, please state your emergency._ "

You remember how nothing would come out. How you couldn't even tell this woman on the other side of the phone that the boy you loved most in the world was dying, was bleeding out in his own bathtub, and you didn't know what to do. You remember kneeling there, looking down at Karkat's limp form, wondering, _will saving him from dying really save his life?_

" _Hello?_ " The 911 operator. Your fingers were numb, clutching the phone.

You gave her the address and hung up. You couldn't force out another word.

Your phone clattered to the ground. You took Karkat's hand, kissed the inside of his wrist. Felt your insides knot together and your eyes sting. Tasted iron - blood.

The cops found you there soon after, holding Karkat's dripping wrist to your lips, muttering prayers to gods you didn't believe in. You refused to leave his side.

The people at the hospital said he likely wouldn't make it. He'd lost a lot of blood, they said, and they had no blood on hand, troll or otherwise, that would act as a compatible supplement. There was a certain type of human blood, they said, that would work, but they had none in stock.

You'd held out your arm and said, "Test it." The doctor had refused, but one of the nurses - a friend's mother? you don't remember - convinced him to agree.

It was a match.

You insisted they take as much as they needed. "Hospitalize me too if you have to," you'd insisted, "just keep Karkat alive."

Luckily, they hadn't needed to hospitalize you. You'd have snuck into Karkat's room and given him more yourself if you had to.

* * *

The fourth time you kissed Karkat's wrist was when he woke up and cursed you for saving him. "I wanted to fucking die," he'd screamed tearfully at you. "Why couldn't you have just let me fucking die?"

You'd spent too many days slumped in the stony chair beside Karkat's hospital bed, willing him to recover. Once, the heart-rate monitor had flatlined; in desperation, you'd breathed his name into his ear, pleading him to return. He had, and you hadn't slept for the next thirty hours out of sheer terror.

Then, finally, he woke up, and the first thing he did was not apologise, but scream at you for not letting him die. He called you a heartless bastard, and a meddling prick, and a lot of names in Alternian.

Through your tears, you'd lifted his bandaged wrist to your lips and kissed it. He'd stopped dead mid-rant, and you'd dared to look him in the eyes.

"It takes bravery," you'd told him, "to slit your own wrists and let yourself bleed out. It takes bravery to actively attempt to end your own life, I know. But I couldn't make it without you," you'd whispered, "so could you maybe try braving survival?"

He'd just stared at you, disgusted, and you knew it had been the wrong thing to say. You went to try again, to rephrase your plea, and came up empty. You could have told him any number of things to make him stay. You couldn't find any.

"Everything can be fixed," you'd said. He'd just shook his head.

You gave up, out of words.

"I love you," you'd told him, kissing his wrist again. Because it was the truth.

He burst into tears and clutched you to him and murmured a thousand sniffled apologies into your hair. You cried into his chest and didn't say a word.

The first place you went from the hospital when Karkat was released was your know-it-all psychologist cousin Rose's house. With the help of her and her jadeblood girlfriend, Kanaya, in whom Karkat took a keen pale interest, you managed to piece him back together, one shard at a time.

* * *

This time, when Dave takes your hand and presses his lips to your wrist, you're crying.

You've been sitting here, cross-legged on the bathroom floor with your shirt tossed off somewhere to the side, for a good twenty minutes, just glaring at your own reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of the door. You were startled out of your bitter, self-deprecating reverie when Dave knocked on the door.

"Karkat?" he asked. "Karkat, you in there?"

When you didn't answer, he opened the door just far enough to stick his head in. Your reflection slid off the edge of the mirror.

"Hey, Karkat," he greeted quietly, slipping into the room. He paused when he saw the look on your face. "What's wrong, beautiful?"

 _Beautiful._ The way it rolled so easily off his tongue, like he didn't even think it through, like it just _happened_. He couldn't have known the thoughts running through your mind. He couldn't have known. He just... _said_ it. Meant it?

Which is why, when he sits down in front of you (blocking your view to the mirror) and kisses your wrist, the way he always does when he's telling you he loves you, you're crying.

"You think I'm beautiful?" you whisper through the tears streaming down your face.

"I _know_ you're beautiful," he corrects emphatically. You sob. Gods, he's perfect.

He kisses your wrist again, trails soft kisses down the palm of your hand, places one on each fingertip. His lips leave kisses everywhere they touch as they skim up your forearm (tickling the tender inside of your elbow, making you giggle), then to your shoulder. The kisses he plants between there and your neck blossom with warmth; soft little feather-kisses, a puff of air in the little hollow behind your ear, more feather-kisses down your jaw. He skirts the teary smile you can't contain, kissing his way up the tracks your tears are leaving. He kisses your eyebrows, your eyelids, the bridge of your nose; trails kisses from there to the tip, and when you scrunch it (it tickles) he kisses the scrunched bit, before finally pulling away. You're smiling through your tears.

"Love you," he states matter-of-factly, as if he's just announced that he's male. You can't stop smiling.

"Love you, too, you incomparable dork," you mutter, leaning forwards to kiss him.

He leans forward to meet you, but swerves, planting a kiss on your jaw instead. You grab him by the face and kiss the sonuvabitch.

His lips are soft against yours. He doesn't offer you tongue; you don't ask for it. The kiss is damp with tears. He kisses you again, and again, and again, and then he pulls away. You follow him, but he places his hands on your face and wipes away your tears, and if you didn't love him so much for it it would feel pale, but he rests his forehead on yours and smiles.

"Come on," he whispers gently, unfolding his legs and standing up. "Let's go somewhere more comfortable, huh?"

You can't find the energy to get up, so you let him take your hands and pull you to your feet. You end up face-to-face.

"Well, hello again," Dave murmurs, smiling down at you. "Fancy seeing you here."

You smile, but it's halfhearted, as is your gentle whack to Dave's chest as you curl in on yourself in his embrace. "You're an idiot."

"I know," Dave replies, scooping you up in his arms. You know you're lighter than you should be - fuck you, anorexia nervosa, you are _working on it, okay_ \- and you curl into him, clutching at his shirt, as he holds you close and carries you out of the bathroom.

He carries you to your bed, and you refuse to let go when he goes to set you down; you end up with him fallen on top of you, but you don't care. You curl your bare toes in the blanket and don't let go of him.

Somehow, he knows what you need even before you do. His lips pepper your face with kisses, trailing down your neck to your collarbone, and you don't stop him as he sets about kissing every inch of skin he can reach. Some days his kisses trail fire across your skin; some days they send heat pooling in your pelvis. The kisses he plants now sink their roots deep into your flesh, blossoming with warmth that reaches all the way to your core. You lie back, fresh tears blooming in your eyes, as Dave kisses his way into your heart.

If this was the old days, the Pre-Assimilation days, you'd have called your moirail - Kanaya would be the one reminding you that mirrors lie. But this isn't the old days, and this isn't your moirail. This is your kismesprit - your matesprit, your kismesis, your everything, and today, he's fucking you pale.

The concept of pale sex is an entirely human one. In most troll/troll relationships, sex is flushed, pitch, or on that rare occasion, what's often referred to as "burgundy". But with human romance's integration came the concept of comfort sex - or, as it was renamed, "Pale Sex". It's such a human idea, such a fucked-up concept to trolls, that it rarely occurs when there isn't a human involved - even mutts, who are relatively accepting of culture-crossing, tend to avoid it. But here, and now, you can fully appreciate the way Dave's strength pours into you through the gentle kisses he presses against you as he gently strips you of every scrap of clothing, leaving you bare to both his lips and his eyes.

When he sinks into you, it's with a tender kiss to your lips that has you sobbing into his shoulder from pleasure and warmth and _love_. And when your orgasm wracks through you, Dave kisses you again, and you clutch at him, crying, as he draws you back into the world of the living.

He lets you cry, lets you breathe, as the world crashes over you, cold and clear. Every breath burns the inside of your throat, frigid and delineating as he wraps you in his embrace and heals you.

* * *

_Your eyes are as red as my ocean;_  
_My life is as black as my sky._  
_So your arms are always open;_  
_Darling, open up my eyes._

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, if only it were really that easy... but I mean, that's why the stories are there. To keep us going.
> 
> If this is or has been a problem for you, post in the comments (\v/ down there) and we can talk if you'd like. I'm always here for anyone who needs a shoulder to cry on, even if there's a fuckton of cyberspace in the way. (If there are any comments of that sort and anyone replies to those comments with snarky "why the fuck are you complaining here" comments I'll skin them alive and wear them as shoes. We're all together here, to some extent, so let's try and keep it supportive, all right?)
> 
> Thanks to the amazingly inspiring Canadian musician, Josh Ramsay of Marianas Trench, for lending me the muse to write this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skxzHroe4Tw for the depression/self-harm; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfUa7VAhvDo for the anorexia. Sorry for the feels - next piece of Sxyvaan's going to be a happy one, I promise :)


End file.
